McCAFFERY: Villanova has reasons to finish season strong

PHILADELPHIA --- For 40 minutes Saturday, without their best player, without two starters, Villanova played No. 20 Notre Dame even. For 40 minutes Monday, with the same two starters out, the Wildcats were tied with Connecticut after regulation.

Both times, the Wildcats lost in overtime.

Both times, Jay Wright tried not to show the pain.

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"The results hurt you," Wright said, after a 45-minute, 73-70 loss to UConn in the Wells Fargo Center. "Right now."

Right now ...

The results are printed and recorded, slammed into the standings, crunched into an RPI, made available to critics buying the useless Bill Parcells overstatement, the one about a team being what its record says.

So they can hurt, for a day, for a couple of days; they can sting the fans and burden the coaches. But there can be something, too, within the results --- something that says, well, maybe there is a chance yet to salvage this season.

This season?

"The losses are there," Wright said. "But we are getting Tyrone Johnson all this time. We are getting Mo Sutton time. This is getting JayVaughn Pinkston time as a go-to player. It's getting Cheek more of an important role.

"Now, you get those other guys back ..."

One of the other guys is Maalik Wayns, out with a sprained knee. He was a Big East Player of the Week in January and is an NBA prospect. He dumped a 39-spot on Cincinnati. And his backcourt presence may have made Villanova 2-0 on the long holiday weekend, not 0-2 with two elongated losses. The other is James Bell, out with a sprained ankle, a candidate last summer for the USA Under-18 team.

They will help, if not immediately, then in the Big East playoffs and, perhaps, in a satellite postseason tournament, the kind young teams can use one year to be contending teams the next.

At 11-16 overall, 4-11 in the conference, Villanova is down to hoping for the Big East's automatic bid to return to the NCAA Tournament. Won't happen. The NIT is out of the conversation, too. But if Wayns and Bell can return and supplement the improving Cheek, Pinkston and Johnson, and the Wildcats can win two of their last three games, then win a game or two in the Garden, they would have the momentum and the mandate to deeply consider the College Basketball Invitational.

In that, they could win even more.

This year? This one.

"Honestly, I don't know enough about the selection process for that," Wright said. "But for us, just to get time to practice with these guys would be a benefit. These guys like each other. They keep coming to practice. They work hard. It's not like you have one of those teams where four or five guys are ready to graduate and just want to get it over with. They are sticking together. It's not pretty. But if we get a chance to play, we'll play."

Villanova was picked to finish eighth in the Big East, thus was forecast as a fringe-to-likely NCAA at-large team. But there were some injuries, and some youth, and more inches-away ill-fortune than one team should be made to tolerate in one season.

But there was thought to be something there, and there was. Pinkston has become a legitimate, late-game option. Cheek scored 23 Monday. Johnson, a freshman, is a keep-an-eye-on point guard. Mouphtaou Yarou and Sutton bang around underneath. Mix in Wayns and Bell this year, and a couple of interesting recruits next year, and 2011-2012 doesn't have to have been a disaster for Villanova basketball.

"We're down two starters," Cheek said. "It will be good to get them back."

It will be too late to do anything worthy of a Pavilion banner. But it could mean a W in the Garden, a basketball-cult postseason bid and a push toward something better next season.

At the minimum, it is another way to look at two losses in three days, neither in regulation, neither as painful as it seemed.